Egypt buys tunnel detectors

December 25, 2007 10:00am

Egypt said it bought a multimillion-dollar system for detecting tunnels on the Gaza Strip’s border.

An unnamed Egyptian official told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that Cairo recently spent U.S. aid funds on an advanced technology that will allow it to find tunnels used to smuggle arms to Hamas-run Gaza from the Sinai.

The assertion came just a day before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was to host Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak for security talks, amid accusations from Jerusalem that Cairo is not doing enough to starve Gaza of weapons and cash.

“It is in our interest to stop the smuggling,” the Egyptian official told the Post. “We have no interest in seeing a radical Muslim group, with ties with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, rise up along our border.”

Israel’s accusatory tack, the official said, “harms relations between Israel and Egypt and it does the opposite of what we would like to do, which is to strengthen relations.”